Former Appleton Road resident Eda Uzuncakara has written a novel and will launch it in Montclair.
Former borough resident Eda Uzuncakara, using the pen name Eda Kara, has written a novel, “The Shared Pulse,” which asks if it is fundamentally necessary for AI to understand human love. She will have a book launching in Montclair tomorrow, Jan. 30.
“Writing a novel is so different from writing a short story,” she said this week in a local cafe. “You need more foundation for a novel. I didn’t want to ‘report’ on my characters’ lives. I want my readers to feel their lives.”
Kara seems qualified to write about the intersection of love and AI. She earned an engineering degree from Bogazici University, in Istanbul, and continued her studies at Stevens Institute of Technology. She also owned and managed a bar and restaurant in the East Village, Manhattan.
“The Shared Pulse” takes place in present day Istanbul. Kara, a former Appleton Road resident, moved back to Istanbul just before the 2023 earthquake and assisted in recovery operations.
“One character in the novel is Alev,” she said. “Her name means flame. She’s a perfectionist who clings to things and uses an AI coach to optimize her life. She’s so much like a woman in our society.”
The other main character is Toprak whose name means earth.
“He’s the opposite of Alev,” Kara continued. “He doesn’t pull away. So basically they are about two basic survival skills. Toprak is using AI, too. He uses it to improve his dating score for an online dating system. They got matched but they shouldn’t have, but did because there’s a glitch in the system.”
The glitch exists, she said, because AI put it there in its attempt to understand human love. It wants to know what love would mean to Alev and Toprak if they were not perfectly matched.
The story is in five parts. Four represent overarching classical elements: fire, earth, air and water. The fifth element is place: Istanbul.
“You can think of the city as a container holding these elements to explain the transformation of the characters and society,” Kara said. “The earth helps you to feel secure. Fire helps you to realize your dreams. Air brings you possibilities and water helps you to transform. It doesn’t have shape. You let things go that you don’t need. In the book nothing is erased. It’s impossible to erase an experience.
“The shared pulse is a love story about two people,” she continued. “In AI life, everything is optimized. Optimizing is having a clear path to your goal. That’s what AI does. The question I’m asking is can we allow chaos in our lives. Being comfortable in uncertainty is a question in the book. It’s a feature in my book of the dating application to simulate organic relationships through devices. I made this up.”
About the Author
